1066 - Andrew Bridgeford [106]
19
The Scandal of Ælfgyva
The lady named as Ælfgyva in the Bayeux Tapestry intrigues and teases us in many ways [scene 17; plate 3]. She is clearly meant to be a focus of our attention. There are only three women depicted in the whole of the main frieze; by contrast, some 600 men strut and saunter across the embroidered stage. Out of the three women, Ælfgyva is the only one who is given a name and it is a name that was popular in the very highest echelons of Anglo-Saxon society. Who this Ælfgyva was and what she is doing in the tapestry are questions which have long baffled observers. With its hint of sex and scandal the Ælfgyva scene remains one of the most mysterious in the whole work.
The scene seems like a curious interjection into the flow of the story, with no obvious link to what occurs before or after. During his enforced stay in Normandy, Harold has been brought to Duke William's palace, probably at Rouen. Harold is seen in earnest discussion with William: we have seen how the artist is probably illustrating his attempt to negotiate the release of his brother Wulfnoth. Then follows ÆElfgyva's scene. She is shown being touched, perhaps stroked, on the cheek by a priest; and a bizarre naked figure in the lower border, gesturing up Ælfgyva's skirt, lewdly appears to mimic the action of the priest. Immediately after this scene, the story moves on. Harold and William depart together in order to campaign in Brittany; they are soon seen crossing the flat sands near Mont-Saint-Michel into Breton territory. The inscription above the Ælfgyva scene is enigmatically short. All it says is UBI UNUS CLERICUS ET ÆLFGYVA (Where a certain cleric and Ælfgyva). Dot, dot, dot, one can almost hear.
What is going on? Who is Ælfgyva? Who is the priest? Does the absence of a verb in the inscription hint at some sexual scandal, as we might suppose from the lewd figure in the lower border? Ælfgyva's identity and her role in the story have been given a great deal of attention by scholars, but there has been little agreement; much mystery remains. For one thing, the meaning of the priest's gesture is disputed. For another, there was no shortage of well-born ladies named Ælfgyva.
The name Ælfgyva (elf-gift) was the name of a family saint in the West Saxon royal dynasty. St Elfgiva, as she is also spelt, died in 944, having piously retired to an abbey. 'She was,' wrote William of Malmesbury in the 1120s, 'a saintly person to whom God granted many revelations.'1 This lady was the wife of King Edmund of England and the mother of Kings Edwy and Edgar; and through her grandson, Æthelred the Unready, she was a great-grandmother of Edward the Confessor. A name with such connections was bound to appeal, and by the eleventh century it was a common name in the best circles of Anglo-Saxon England.
Many Ælfgyvas/Ælfgifus (the spelling is used interchangeably) have, over the years, been proposed as the tapestry's lady. In the very highest echelons of Anglo-Saxon society we know of three Ælfgyvas/Ælfgifus in particular; each held the status of a queen in the generation before 1066.2
A lady named Ælfgifu was the first wife of Edward the Confessor's father Æthelred the Unready. From her union with Æthelred descended the once-exiled and now returned branch of the Anglo-Saxon royal family represented in 1066 by Edgar Ætheling. Edgar's hereditary claim to the throne was strong. Could his great-grandmother Ælfgifu, who had died at the dawn of the millennium, be the lady in the tapestry? Is, perhaps, some point being made detrimental to Edgar's claim to the throne?
When this first Ælfgifu died, King Æthelred married Emma, the daughter of Duke Richard I of Normandy. Upon her marriage to Æthelred, Emma of Normandy abandoned her name of birth and obligingly took the same name as her husband's first wife, Ælfgifu. Their children